CHAUNCEY  WETMORE  WELLS 

1872-1933 


This  book  belonged  to  Chauncey  Wetmore  Wells.  He  taught  in 
Yale  College,  of  which  he  was  a  graduate,  from  1897  to  1901,  and 
from  1901  to  1933  at  this  University. 

Chauncey  Wells  was,  essentially,  a  scholar.  The  range  of  his  read 
ing  was  wide,  the  breadth  of  his  literary  sympathy  as  uncommon 
as  the  breadth  of  his  human  sympathy.  He  was  less  concerned 
with  the  collection  of  facts  than  with  meditation  upon  their  sig 
nificance.  His  distinctive  power  lay  in  his  ability  to  give  to  his 
students  a  subtle  perception  of  the  inner  implications  of  form, 
of  manners,  of  taste,  of  the  really  disciplined  and  discriminating 
mind.  And  this  perception  appeared  not  only  in  his  thinking  and 
teaching  but  also  in  all  his  relations  with  books  and  with  men. 


JOSHUA  TREES 


JOSHUA  TREES 


BY 


FREDERICK  MORTIMER  CLAPP 


BOSTON 
MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 

1922 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


POETRY 

On  the  Overland 

New  York  and  Other  Verses 

PROSE 

Les  dessins  de  Pontormo 

Jacopo  Carucci 

History  of  17th  Aero  Squadron 


IN  MEMORIAM 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY 

MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS  J 

PAGE 

BLOOM  ON  THE  DESERT'S  EDGE 3 

ARCHEOLOGY 4 

STILL  LIFE 5 

CONTACT 6 

VENETIAN  GULLS 7 

THE  MONKEY  CAGE 9 

CALIFORNIA:  THE  HILLS  OF  BOLINAS 11 

CRUCIFIXION 12 

ARIZONA 13 

REVULSION 14 

CUCKOOS 15 

QUINCE  BLOSSOMS 16 

LIGHT 17 

SURVIVALS 18 

ONCE  MORE  THE  PATHETIQUE 19 

QUERY  TO  THE  LORD  OF  LIGHT 20 

THE  EXPLORER 21 

To  THE  DISEMBODIED  INTELLIGENCE 23 

A  SPRING  SONG  FOR  CALIFORNIA 24 

GRAMOPHONE  SOLO 25 

.     VERSUS 26 

A  STYLIST .27 

REVOLUTIONARIES .28 

WINDLESS  RAIN 29 

CIRCULAR  FANS 30 

BYZANTINE  MOSAICS 31 

POSTPONEMENT 34 

PEACE 35 

SUBURBAN  TWILIGHT 37 

ANNOUNCING  A  DISSOLUTION  SALE 38 

COSTA  SCARPUCCIA 39 

REQUIEM 41 

OTHERNESS 42 

To  A  BIVALVE 43 

MARIONETTES 44 

WORDS 46 


863756 


JOSHUA  TREES 


Errata: 

Page  24  line  23:  "violent'9  should  read  "violet" 
Page  26  line  19:  a  comma  should  follow  "lacrymose" 
Page  43  line  17:  "breadth"  should  read  "breath" 


JOSHUA  TREES 


BLOOM  ON  THE  DESERT'S  EDGE  v/-V:,/::'' 

DAWN  inks  in  the  saw-toothed  foothills 
against  its  nickel  glare ; 
and,  like  the  tail  end  of  a  flare, 
a  handful  of  stars 

drag  their  light  through  the  spikes  of  a  Joshua  tree 
and  sink  out  of  sight. 

Night  flattens  and  thickens; 
and  noiselessly  working, 
like  a  mind  full  of  dreams, 
spectral  exhalations 
wind  with  wool 
the  acacias'  fish-bone  leaves. 

Time  heaves 
and  lies  dead  still 
an  instant's  eternity. 
Everything  waits. 
Everything  listens. 
Chill  stillness  fills 
everything 
like  the  shadow 
of  a  great  wing. 

A  patch  of  alkali  glistens. 

And  fiercely  the  sun  clears  the  foothills 

and  the  sky  is  mercury 

hissing  with  mirage  where  it  eats  into  the  land, 

and  the  air  is  yellow  with  acacias  in  full  bloom. 

Napoleon's  thoughts  before  Jena  must  have  come  like  this. 


[3] 


ARCHEOLOGY 


Gran  Podestade  di  Verona, 
they  have  pried  up  the  lid  of  your  sarcophagus 
because  it  is  now  the  sixth  centenary 
of  your  shabby  friend  Dante  — 
you  remember?  — 
him  whom  Florence  deported 
and  who  said  he  had  walked  through  Hell 
yet  found  your  stairs  so  steep. 

And  Cangrande  you  are  a  heap  of  musty  rags 

to  the  camera's  hard  eye, 

a  hunched  muddle  of  rags  and  bones 

like  the  striker  they  potted  on  B  Street, 

Tolusa, 

in  a  recent  riot.  .  .  . 

They  photographed  him  too 

where  he  lay 

for  the  Sunday  paper. 

And  they  have  taken  out  of  your  hawklike  right  hand 

your  long  sword  of  state, 

all  jewels  and  fine  gold, 

and  put  it  into  a  glass  box 

with  a  brief  exact  label  — 

name  and  date, 

length  and  weight. 

Ah,  Cangrande  di  Verona, 
C-randissima  Podestade  ! 


STILL  LIFE 

TO  withdraw  impassive  upon  myself 
until  the  scattered  beady  quicksilver  of  thought, 
mingling,  make  my  consciousness  a  mirror 
where  all  things  will  enter,  but  none  remain; 

to  assume  my  selfness  completely 

by    a    contraction    that    envelops    and    yet    rejects    all 

otherness — 

this  would  be  to  become  a  flower. 
There  is  no  other  birth  into  perfection. 

Anemones,  black-hearted  paper-fine  anemones, 

I  have  found  this  out 

seeing  your  white,  purple,  red 

reflected  in  the  untroubled  reality 

of  a  looking-glass. 

But  what  are  you  doing  in  this  old  bronze  pot 

on  my  table? 

Your  stems  are  as  pale  and  sinuous  as  a  shepherd's  melody. 

Come,  let  us  dance  together; 

it  is  spring,  and  I  have  attended  the  obsequies 

of  all  my  desires. 


CONTACT 

A  CRACKLING  spark, 

-Tv  ear-splitting,  rips  between  the  polished  poles 
of  your  whining  static  machine, 
oscillating 
like  a  whipped  rapier. 

So  we  have  rushed  upon  one  another 
licking  through  the  dry  tension  of  emotion. 

And  the  air  stings  and  rings 
with  the  stimulation  and  clarity 
of  ozone. 

We  have  rechemicalized 
the  circumambient. 


VENETIAN  GULLS 

TO-DAY  they  have  come  in  from  the  sea, 
the  pearl-grey  gulls  with  white  throats,  white  tails, 
and  wings  edged  with  frills  of  foam. 
The  green  canal  water, 
harassed  in  its  hunger  for  tranquillity 
by  the  worry  and  bubble  of  many  oars  and  keels, 
lies  fitted  in  between  somnolent  palaces 
like  a  finely  chiseled  pavement  of  Chinese  jade. 
The  hard  oblique  light  falls  clearer  than  flawless  glass, 
cutting  out  pink  roofs  and  high  pink  towers 
flat  against  the  sky ; 

and,  wheeling  and  skimming  through  it, 
on  wings  frilled  with  the  white  of  foam, 
pearl-grey  gulls  fly 

in  straining,  ascending  and  descending  spirals, 
over  green  water  irised  into  its  depths 
with  reflections  of  crumbling  brick 
and  age-ivoried  marble. 

Skimming,  wheeling,  wheeling,  skimming,  they  fly 
over  limpid  jade-green  water 
and  its  furling,  unfurling,  irised  shadows 
that  have  rinsed  out  of  the  backward-slipping  centuries 
insinuations  of  yellowing  lace, 
purple  figs, 
flaked  gilt, 
pomegranates, 

and    frost-flushed    creeper    leaves    where    summer    still 
smoulders. 

The  gulls  fly 

in  parabolas  and  hyperbolas,  ellipses  and  cycloids, 

flapping  hungrily 

with  a  peevish  sharp  cry. 


They  swirl,  sweeping  past  empty  round-arched  windows, 

empty  gothic  windows, 

empty  flamboyant  windows, 

and  the  rusty  iron-work  and  lank  slimy  seaweed 

of  water  gates. 

They  swoop  past  rain-washed  balustrades 
of  porphyry  balconies, 
squealing  down  on  to  floating  shadows 
of  delicate  solemn  palaces. 

Dangling  their  red  feet 

they  swoop  and  hover  over  inverted  shadowy  palaces 

that  melt  and  spread  like  heavy  oils 

on  the  canal's  deep  green. 

It  is  bitterly  cold  for  early  October 

and  watching  the  gulls  from  my  window 

I  am  filled  with  an  imprisoned  vague  desolation. 

Hungry  intentions  swirl  through  me 

in  petulant  spirals 

and  flapping  hyperbolas — 

unattained  projects  driven  in,  at  the  year's  end, 

from  sea  beaches  of  life 

that  free  and  changing  tides  have  swept  clean. 

Improvident  intentions  veer  about  in  me 

whirling  whirring  wings, 

as  they  settle  down  over  lingering  irised  reflections  in  my 

mind 
of  other  men's  delicate  and  solemn  achievements. 

The  flawless  light  of  Autumn's  reality  stares 

at  a  world  narrowed  to  a  prison, 

under  this  high  pearl-grey  layer  of  unbroken  clouds, 

where  the  gulls  peevishly  crying 

have  come  in  famished  from  the  sea. 

[8] 


CHE  MONKEY  CAGE 

rHE  mind  seeks  liberation 
but  seeking  grasps  tighter  the  bars  of  incarnation 
itaring  into  the  misty  hypothesis, 
ind  reality  is  a  moment  furtively  lucid 
>etween  dreams. 
[This  is  too  technical.) 

'Please  do  not  feed  or  annoy  the  animals." 

Che  mind  seeks  liberation, 

>ut  few  can  make  an  exit  unobserved, 

ind  the  King  of  Dahomey 

las  many  spiritual  relations 

vho  live  in  palaces  of  skulls. 

[This  is  too  poetical.) 

jive  me  strength  on  this  foggy  morning, 

vhen  all  the  pyramidal  pines  are  as  flat  and  flimsy 

is  black  and  white  drop-curtains  easy  to  lunge  through, 

ind  the  live  oaks,  hugging  one  another, 

ire  immense  toadstools 

)lack-purple  on  the  blue  mist 

—nothing  to  knock  over; 

?ive  me  strength  to  make  something 

nit  of  the  ice-cold  iron  I  have  been  tugging  at. 

Shall  I  twist  it  like  a  hairpin 

ind  make  an  instrument  to  measure  a  star? 

Shall  I  brain  an  enemy  with  it? 

Shall  I  flail  out  the  seed  of  tribulation 

nto  penance  and  a  slave's  salvation? 

3r  praise  God  on  a  vertical  trapeze 

putting  Swedish  gymnastics  into  another  dimension? 

Phe  spectators  in  sleazy  bowler  hats — 
white  mouths  and  goggle  eyes, 

[9] 


like  codfish  nosing  about  a  tank- 
gulp  each  other's  excrement, 
and  gleefully  flap  about 
admiring  my  captive  nudity. 


[10] 


CALIFORNIA:  THE  HILLS  OF  BOLINAS 

WIND  racing  inland 
pawing  the  sea  into  creeping  scallops — 
heavy-winged,  galloping  wind, 
half  horse,  half  bird — 
you  bound 

and  bump  against  the  drooping  belly  of  the  clouds, 
you  stumble 
scrambling  inland  into  the  steep  Sierra. 

And  the  yellow  hills  like  heaps  of  half-empty  balloons 

sag  back  from  the  beach  in  crumples, 

puff  up  in  bulges, 

and  shuddering  drag  at  their  moorings. 

Wind  out  of  Asia, 

why  are  your  feet  so  fierce  upon  these  hills? — 

you  who  have  come  from  the  Harp-playing  Defile 

and  tawny  Omei-shan, 

you  who  have  spoken  to  the  pines  of  Miajima 

and  counted  the  yellow  nets 

on  the  beach  at  Suruga? 


CRUCIFIXION 

r^ISPASSIONATELY 

*^*   I  spit  my  thoughts  like  flies  on  a  pin 

because  by  their  buzzing  they  keep  reminding  me 

it  was  love,  without  which  nothing  lives, 

imprisoned  me  here 

that  I  might  know  how  beautiful  and  all-merciful  love  is 

and  how  nothing  matters  but  love — 

me  nailed  up,  as  a  joke,  high  between 

sparkling  Virgo  and  Sagittarius 

with  the  steady  leaking  and  waste  of  my  days 

dripping  like  water 

on  to  my  skull. 


[12] 


ARIZONA 

THESE  wind-corroded  mountains 
of  malachite  and  steatite  and  azurite, 
of  zinc  and  mica  and  feldspar, 
and  dry  as  buried  bones 
and  arid  as  salt  crystals  in  an  oven — 
O  holy  land  where  nothing  is  that's  holy, 
where  nothing  lives  but  mine  prospectors'  stakes, 
indulger  and  betrayer  of  passions 
withering  and  fierce  as  your  sun.  .  .  . 
Now  grim  John  and  his  locusts  are  an  unrolled  scroll 

to  me, 

and  the  Lamb  of  God,  the  Boddhi  Tree  and  Mecca. 
Listen,  there  is  something  screaming 
like  a  scalded  baby, 
listen,  the  desert  jackal; 

and  dawn  whisks  the  crawling  stars  out  of  heaven 
like  a  scooping  hand  catching  flies  on  an  oil-cloth  table. 

0  Lamb  of  God, 

1  am  homesick,  and  men  in  their  cities 
are  less  to  me  than  tumble-weed 
bounding  across  the  dry  slime 

of  dead  lakes. 

The  Lord  will  overwhelm  their  cities  with  sand ; 

the  true  God  will  bury  their  cities 

utterly. 

But  the  flute  and  the  drum 

and  the  masked  dance  of  His  ritual  shall  endure, 

His  revelation  shall  endure  like  the  mica  and  feldspar 

of  these  wind-corroded  mountains; 

and  it  shall  not  be  for  nothing 

that  more  a  friendless  exile 

than  once  in  Galilee  or  Araby 

He  tramps  about  this  country. 


[13] 


REVULSION 

THIS  afternoon 
my  life  came  out  of  its  lurking  place 
underground, 

its  two-mouthed  gopher  hole, 
and  squeaked  at  me. 
Looking  up,  with  its  tiny  eyes 
beady  and  spiteful, 
it  winced,  it  squeaked  at  me. 

What  am  I? 

— the  little,  bare,  rain-pitted  mound 
nosed  up  at  the  mouth  of  its  hole? 

What  am  I? 

— the  wind's  erotic  finger 
wound  like  an  idiot  girl's 
round  a  sun-stricken  wild  flower 
on  its  burrow's  edge? 

Or  the  rotting  rain 

splitting  open  the  toadstool 

of  my  knowledge 

and  leaving  it  stinking  and  yellow? 

But  what  does  it  matter  what  I  think  I  am, 

or  whether  I  made  it 

or  it  made  me, 

when  my  life  has  squeaked  at  me 

with  spiteful  eyes? 

I  know,  I  know.  .  .  . 
It  has  nibbled  in  the  dark 
the  roots  of  bitter  weeds. 
But  then  that  is  its  nature. 

I'll  go  and  make  friends 
with  the  porcelain-faced  odalisque 
who  grins  shoving  out  butter  pats 
in  Boos  Bros.'  cafeteria. 

[14] 


CUCKOOS 

DEOPLE  of  parchment  in  beautiful  villas, 

*•     your  gardens'  light  and  shade 

plays  at  chess  with  the  sun; 

and  on  their  own  tails  intent 

your  peacocks  parade 

down  a  lichened  balustrade. 

Perennial  flowers  unfold 

hearing  the  grit  of  your  feet 

on  this  gravel  path. 

Your  gardeners  are  very  wise  and  old. 

But  your  villas'  vaulted  rooms'  array 

and  your  crocuses  and  stocks 

are  an  aftermath 

of  long  ago  and  far-away 

that  keeps  you  alive  while  it  mocks. 

A  warm  wind  rocks  your  fountain's  jet 

yet  you  grow  cold. 

Weary  people  of  parchment 

with  an  eye,  ringed  round  with  wrinkles, 

that  twinkles 

malicious  hunger  with  itself  at  strife, 

once  did  it  make  your  heart  leap, 

this  unfading  beauty — 

once,  when  you  paid  for  it  with  a  sigh 

and  turned  your  back  on  life, 

once,  before  years  into  many  years  had  slipped 

by  irretraceable  degrees? 

You  have  made  your  nest 

in  the  remorseless  eternity  of  beauty. 

I.  ... 

Ah,  the  seeds  of  a  dream's  perpetuity 

are  too  cheap 

in  Italy 

for  me. 

[15] 


QUINCE  BLOSSOMS 

OUT  of  your  leafless  stem, 
five-petaled  quince, 
your  pistil  a  pearl, 
your  stamens  a  little  yellow  sheaf, 
burst  in  perfection  now  the  night 
that  disimprisons  you 
comes. 

I  am  weary  of  men  and  their  folly 
and  of  my  own  folly, 
and  my  days  are  empty  of  elation, 
and  my  thoughts — I  wince  at  them 
remembering  them. 

Ah,  but  pure  the  delight 
with  which  I  curl 
the  caress  of  my  eyes 
around  your  clusters, 
flower  sudden  as  revelation 
and  unearthly 
as  second  sight. 


[16] 


LIGHT 

EKE  a  runner  running  over  a  starlit  plain 
breathless,  with  clenched  hands,  wildly, 
for  fear  of  the  sardonic  quietness 
of  the  stars, 
when   the    wasted   hills    settling   down   into   their    deep 

composure 

whisper  to  one  another,  under  the  slow  rotation  of  the  sky, 
when  the  still  night  air  is  cold  in  his  mouth.  .  .  . 

Take  not  away  from  me,  in  my  breathless  running 
through  the  darkness  with  clenched  fingers  and  bruised 

feet- 
take  not  from  me,  you  smiling  and  scornful  immensities, 
the  agonizing  light  behind  my  blind  eyes — 
take  not  away  from  me  flight. 

Look!    I  am  only  a  crazed  runner 

running  over  a  starlit  plain 

wildly,  aimlessly,  with  the  cold  of  death  in  my  mouth, 

running,  running  breathless  through  my  own  mania 

for  fear  of  the  sardonic  quietness 

of  your  eternal  stars. 


[17] 


SURVIVALS 


VERY  WHERE  there  is  something  hanging  by  a 

thread 
all  over  the  world: 
bits  of  loose  plaster  caught, 
twisting  with  the  wind  in  spiders'  webs, 
high  up  on  scaling  old  walls  ; 

fruit,  leaves,  and  seeds  that  would  slip  from  their  dry  stems 
in  the  faintest  stir  of  this  deep-sleeping  Autumn  air; 
old  houses  that  would  crumble 
if  you  let  a  window  slam  ; 
old  ships  that  would  sink 
if  a  tired  sea-gull  lighted  on  their  rail; 
cliffs  that  a  beetle's  pincers,  nipping  a  spear  of  grass, 
would  topple  over  into  peaceful  valleys; 
avalanches  that  wait  to  rumble  down 
only  the  melting  of  one  point 
of  one  snowflake's  crushed  six-pointed  star; 
bodies,  stiffening  with  death's  stoniness, 
held  up  on  a  will  to  live 
over  the  grave; 

dead  ideas,  like  stuffed  birds  on  a  rusty  wire, 
all  dust  and  rumpled  feathers, 

still  turning  in  some  draughty  hallway  of  the  mind, 
simulating  flight; 
the  earth  itself  still  counterpoised 
on  its  own  dying  spinning 
in  space  — 

all  that  absolving  time  in  its  hurry  overlooks 
everywhere  lifelessly  clinging  to  life, 
in  the  midst  of  death's 
universal  tender  loosening  into  peace. 


[18] 


ONCE  MORE  THE  PATHETIQUE 

I  LISTENED  again,  after  years,  to  music 
that  once  like  a  sea  wind 
blew  clean  the  summits  of  my  mind. 

I  listened, 

cloudy  with  seasons  of  Himalayan  mists 

sticking  to  the  roof  of  my  world, 

and  oh  so  much  more  than  ever 

in  need  of  that  revelation. 

But,  wedged  in  among  hundreds  of  faces, 
rows  on  thick  expectant  rows  of  them, 
I  became  a  stone-cold  Laocoon 
crawled  over  by  the  coiling  and  uncoiling 
of  scaly  sounds. 

Some  one  other  than  myself  used  my  eyes  to  watch  the 

conductor  sweat. 

Some  one  other  than  myself  was  sickened  by  the  breath 
of  a  much-moved  woman  behind  me. 

And  I  ran  up  through  an  interminable  black  tunnel 
towards  a  tiny  vent-hole  of  light. 

Curses  on  the  multiplication  table! 


[19] 


QUERY  TO  THE  LORD  OF  LIGHT 

DAINICHI,  your  hands  clasped 
in  the  gesture  of  the  union 
of  mortality  with  the  infinite, 
making  the  symbol  of  the  five  senses 
closing  upon  wisdom 
clearer  than  the  heart  of  a  diamond.  .  .  . 
Dainichi,  light  of  the  world, 
the  gilt  flakes  off 
your  golden  body; 
flake  by  flake  it  chips  off 
and  falls  into  the  stone-rimmed  pool 
below  your  altar. 

And  the  gold  fish  wake  out  of  their  cold  dreams ; 
they  think  they  see  the  wings  of  a  dead  butterfly ; 
they  dart  upon  them  like  streaks  of  sunlight ; 
they  fight  about  the  flakes 
of  the  bright  body 
of  your  immeasurable  wisdom; 
and  their  churning  tails 
leave  tiny  eddies  and  ripples 
on  the  pool. 

O  Illuminator, 

how  comes  the  phantom  of  hunger 

to  lurk  so  untamed  in  the  shadow  of  your  light? 


[20] 


THE  EXPLORER 

HIS  brittle  hands  let  a  pale  rosiness 
through  from  the  fire  as  he  passed  them  over  his 
white  beard, 

and  the  skin  on  his  skull 
over  a  puckered  bushiness  of  brows 
brought  back  to  me  the  feeling  of  an  ivory 
I  have  often  had  in  my  hands — a  stained  figure 
of  a  Christ  caressed  by  who  will  ever  say 
how  many  lips. 

So  when  he  told  me  how  he  explored  alone 

Lake  Nyassa  a  long,  long  lifetime  ago, 

scaling  the  snow-capped  chain  of  Marununga's  peaks 

that  stand  around  it 

and  plunge  toothed  shadows 

into  the  sun-devoured  gold 

of  its  rippleless  immensity, 

I  no  longer  felt  he  was  sitting  there, 

fragile  and  old  beside  me. 

I  only  heard  his  quiet  voice. 

And  through  my  mind 

lithe    black   men,    nude,    bronze-glossy,    full    of    held-in 

swiftness, 

crawled  on  all  fours,  with  big  white  watchful  eyes, 
through  mango  thickets, 
beyond  Ayanga  and  Makanga, 
serpent-wise,  in  fear  of  cruel  gods, 
cruel  chiefs,  cruel  enemies. 
And  deep  behind  my  eyes 
clusters  of  blooms,  obscenely  poisonous, 
hung  from  a  woven  dome  of  mulando  boughs, 
strangled  and  stifling  with  the  stench  of  decay. 

I  saw  blue-faced  baboons  with  scarlet  buttocks 
and  lecherous  tails 
slinking  through  silver  reeds 

[21] 


in  the  heron-haunted  Morambala  marshes ; 

and  luridly,  through  the  listless  air — 

green,  red,  black,  yellow,  strident  streaks  they  seemed — 

great  birds 

screamed  over  me,  settling  like  gossamer 

down  the  livid  half-light 

on  gorgeous,  unfluttered,  outspread  plumes. 

I  felt  the  crushing  sun's  heat 

on  a  thatch  of  swamp -fattened  leaves, 

while  the  jungle  snapped  and  shivered 

at  something  squirming  its  way 

down  to  the  molten  gold  of  the  lake. 

And  through  it  all  I  kept  hearing  drums  of  ebony  beating 

through  a  steady  throb  of  beaten  drums  beating 

through  a  thick,  ecstatic  pulse  of  deeper  drums, 

while  an  unsteady  flute 

spilled,  like  a  rivulet  of  sulphur  creeping  through  the  dark, 

a  trickle  of  gasping  melody 

that  turned  upon  itself  and  coiled  and  suddenly  set  free 

a  shuffling  of  soft  feet 

and  wriggle  of  bare  flesh 

and  jiggle  of  black  breasts 

in  rites  more  ancient  than  the  jungle  is. 

Till  on  the  turn-turn,  tum-tum-tum, 

and  unending  flicker  of  the  flute 

I  felt  the  jeweled  pinion  of  my  brain, 

on  which  my  thoughts  revolve, 

spin  into  giddiness. 

For  there  was  something,  behind  me,  beside  me,  above  me, 

so  soaked  and  soaked  again  and  steaming 

with  life, 

something  so  dark  and  teeming  with  existence 

that  the  naked  black  men's  naked  fear 

put  its  damp  fingers  into  my  heart.  .  .  . 

Then  looking  up  I  saw  him  stroking  in  a  revery 
his  white  beard 

and  speaking  like  one  who  has  forgotten  that  he  speaks. 

[22] 


TO  THE  DISEMBODIED  INTELLIGENCE 

quickly 

out  of  your  polar  seclusion 
where,  by  spinning  on  your  heel  scornfully, 
you  have  often  reversed  the  motion  of  the  stars  .  .  . 
quickly — 
this  cane-brake  is  swarming  with  lascivious  pigmies. 

I  have  known  in  what  nothingness  consists. 

Obliterate  my  apartness 

in  the  benediction 

of  your  basilisk  eyes. 

There  can  be  between  us  now 

no  side  considerations, 

no  vicious  charity. 

What  if  once  I  did  stupidly  think 

there  was  a  secret  kinship 

between  myself 

and  forgotten  idols? 


[23] 


A  SPRING  SONG  FOR  CALIFORNIA 

A  TOMTIT'S  cheep,  addressed 
to  the  gurgle  of  the  creek, 
flits  sharp  as  a  little  crotchet's  hook 
jotted  carelessly  oblique 
in  a  new  blank-book. 
This  season's  pullets  have  begun  to  sit. 
The  gruntings  of  a  saxophone 
intone  with  unregarding  glee 
someone's  opulent  vacuity 
too  long  suppressed. 
A  punted  football's  twirls 
loop  up  and  droop 
into  a  crook'd  arm. 
The  sunshine  is  blue  as  an  arc  light, 
and  the  swirls  of  the  hill's  edge  through  it 
delight 
even  me. 

Now  moment  after  moment  limpidly  laps  against  me 
like  a  warm  ripple  and  yields 

gayly 

its  tether  on  eternity 

to  another. 

A  violent  cyclamen  stares 

in  a  red  pot. 

The  marble  clouds  pile  up 

and  file  away  behind  the  trees 

complacently. 

The  rains  have  passed 

like  naked  girls 

running  at  dawn  over  fallow  fields. 

The  ground  is  soft  as  a  cheese  to  spade 

and  bursting  buds  shake  a  cannonade 

over  ants  gone  mad  on  their  army  affairs, 

while  local  architects  swing  and  smile 

in  swivel  chairs. 

[24] 


GRAMOPHONE  SOLO 

"C^INGERING  a  tune  on  my  clarionet 
-••      I  burned  a  village  of  wooden  shacks — 
these  melodious  attacks 
are  more  insidious  than  they  seem. 

Yet  people  look  for  lightning  in  their  music — 
the  flash  that  will  short-circuit  their  emotions 
through  me! 
Then  they  go  shouting,  "Firebug!  Firebug!" 

Engine  of  our  inspiration 

(And  how  like  a  thing  beset 

it  spins 

fearfully ; 

look,  and  the  spark  of  it 

how  it  skims  and  skips!), 

engine,  before  your  hum 

acts  like  a  drug 

and  still  more  mixed  our  metaphors  become, 

intimate,  intimate  to  me 

what  makes  you  make  me  squeeze  a  melody 

through  the  tube  of  a  clarionet 

and  hold  it  like  elixir  to  their  lips 

when  where  it  drips  it  burns — 

since  fire  is  the  liquid  of  the  voice  of  any  bird 

and  crematory  to  the  common  herd? 


[25] 


.     VERSUS     . 

ELECTION  Day. 

-^   The  sky-blue  plumbago  basks, 
a  motionless  wave  of  bloom, 
under  this  dry  exhilarating 
California  sun. 

Ford  cars,  buzzing  like  clocks 

that  have  lost  their  balance-wheels, 

deliver  eggplants, 

polished  and  purple, 

and  white  ranch  eggs  stuck  in  cardboard  pigeon-holes. 

A  gramophone  grits  its  teeth  over  a  jazz. 

Crack! 

They  are  playing  baseball  in  the  lot  next  door. 

Election  Day ! 

And  which  shape  of  straw 

will  the  befuddled  giant  choose  this  time 

to  jiggle  on  jocose  thumb  at  his  puppet-show, 

while  Europe,  in  her  dotage, 

looks  up,  incredulous,  lacrymose. 

expecting — 

surely  not  another  Messiah! 

Election  Day. 

My  newspaper  crinkles  and  smells  like  a  sawmill 
as,  open-mouthed,  I  skim  over  the  last  exhortations 
of  frantic  and  unselfish  candidates. 

Crack! 

They  are  playing  ball  in  the  lot  next  door — 
"Yea-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay" 
Surely  not  already  the  Messiah! 

The  plumbago  basks  in  the  still  sun, 
scentless  and  sky-blue. 

[26] 


A  STYLIST 

OELF-SUFFICIENT  and  shut  in  upon  myself 

^  I  thought  I  could  hold  words  on  to  the  grindstone 

of  my  imagination, 

so  firm,  so  long, 

that  with  the  fine  edge  of  their  subtlety 

I  could,  when  the  moment  came, 

chip  imperishable  figures 

out  of  the  unquarried  ledges  of  my  life. 

How  many  years  have  been  sucked  up 

into  my  stone's  whirling 

and  lost  in  the  gush  of  its  winking  sparks! 

How  many  years — 

while  the  shapes  I  was  going  to  chisel 

have  faded  out  of  my  mind. 

Faded  completely. 

And  now  I  have  it  in  my  hands, 

this  whetted  instrument, 

what  am  I  to  do  with  it 

hacking  and  hewing  at  shadows 

that  mocking 

hack  and  hew  at  me? 

Ouf,  the  cliff  sculptures  of  Tibet  and  China! 


[27] 


REVOLUTIONARIES 

TO  bring  down  suddenly  and  utterly, 
as  an  earthquake  would,  the  rotting  edifice 
where  Faith  has  been  walled  up  in  incest  with  the  shadow 

of  her  fear 

for  centuries  and  centuries, 

to  burn  the  rags  of  Faith's  diseases  and  her  rusty  irons 
in  a  vision's  smokeless  flame — this  was  their  dream, 
when  Thought   (who  knew  the  purging  of  his  parents' 

incest 

would  make  a  beggar  of  him  on  the  public  streets) 
in  their  ear 

whispered  a  syllable  that  gave  again  to  their  mortal  eyes 
a  pregnant  sight  .  .  . 
while  treacherously  caressing  the  wayward  flower-flame 

of  their  vision 
he  tore  loose  from  eternity 
the  slim  deep  roots  of  its  light. 


[28] 


WINDLESS  RAIN 


R^IN  at  dawn  on  the  tiles  of  Venice, 
a  soft  straight  steady  slipping  down  of  rain: 
water  mistily  passing  into  water 
with  a  diffused  hush. 
Not  another  sound  in  the  city, 

no  lapping  of  waves,  no  knocking  together  of  boats. 
Everything  sleeping. 

I  look  out  and  watch  the  rain, 

until  the  silence  of  the  low  misty  clouds 

and  the  silence  of  the  sleeping  city, 

and  the  inner  silence  into  which  all  my  thoughts  have  been 

sucked  up 

cling  to  one  another 
with  the  chill  caressing  gesture 
of  the  Three  Graces, 
the  delicate  Lesbian  goddesses 
of  the  cathedral  library  of  dry  Siena. 
I  see  them  projected  from  the  magic  lantern  of  my  mind 
against  the  impalpable  unbroken 
background  of  the  rain.  .  .  . 

Mesmerizing  sound  of  rain  on  canal  water  — 

There  is  a  shadowless  beginning  of  light  now 

everywhere  ; 

but  at  the  corner  of  Calle  Lanza  and  Calle  San  Gregorio 

lamplight  is  yellow  still  on  grey  walls. 


[29] 


CIRCULAR  FANS 

THE  perimeters  of  the  minds  of  most  people, 
how  quickly  you  can  measure  them ! — 
two  carved  or  painted  little  sticks 
of  environment  and  heredity 
laid  face  to  face, 

and  when  with  the  bright  smile  of  an  idea 
you  open  them, 

turning  them  through  their  full  orbit, 
when  carefully  laying  them  back  to  back 
you  fasten  the  gilt  clasp  of  their  prejudice, 
there    outspread,    the   pleated    complete    circle   of   their 

intelligence : 

a  low  moon  scratched  across  by  river  reeds  perhaps ; 
a  humble  doorway  into  daily  tribulations ; 
some  emblematic  holy  figure.  .  .  . 

Fan  yourself! 

How  will  you  ever 

stir  otherwise  this  torpid  air? 


[SO] 


BYZANTINE  MOSAICS 

/GESTICULATION  and  laughter  and  bombardment 

^JT       of  flowers 

beside  this  deep  blue  sea, 

under  this  deep  sea-blue  sky. 

The  chattering  crowd  falls  greedily  on  its  moment — 

the  living  promiscuous  crowd  living  out  its  living  desires. 

It  is  the  feast  of  the  Most  Holy  and  Immaculate  Virgin, 

the  compassionate,  the  interceding. 

The  swirling  frivolity  of  thousands  of  faces 

gurgles  around  me 

lapping  into  my  eyes  with  bright  provocative  ripples. 

But,  turned  in  upon  myself, 

I  remember 

that,  in  the  twilight  of  crumbling  apses, 

I  have  seen  recognition 

in  fixed  inhuman  eyes 

and  something  invisible  to  others 

pass  over  their  expression 

as  I  have  gazed  up  at  half-obliterated  figures 

tall  and  very  frail  and  loaded  down 

with  all  the  sapphires  and  emeralds 

of  imperial  treasuries. 

Ascetic  and  cruel  and  cadaverous  women 

cancerous  with  defeat  and  an  empire's  decrepitude, 

insane  and  exquisite  and  inquisitive  women 

silent  with  the  poison  of  an  impassive  voluptuousness 

and  full  of  ruinous  understanding, 

we  have  understood  one  another 

without  intercession  or  compassion. 

And  how  should  I  not  be  a  stranger  at  flower  festivals 

among  these  children  of  barbarians, 

when  in  my  mind  you  linger 


[31] 


enduring  without  a  gesture 

the  gleaming  functions 

and  tedious  last  rites 

of  plague-depopulated  capitols? 

The  obscurity  and  falling  away  of  dead  time 

is  bridgeless  between  us. 

And  you  will  never  come  back  again  to  this  impoverished 

world 

where  only  paltry  and  tawdry  counterfeits, 
like  these  tinseled  village  girls  made  up  as  queens, 
enthroned  while  the  procession  lasts 
from  city  gate  to  city  gate, 
parade 
in  pasteboard  cars  of  triumph. 

I  have  looked  into  your  great  fixed  eyes 

and  seen  the  end  of  life  like  a  little  light 

floating  far-off  on  the  edge  of  the  sea  at  night. 

You  have  turned  upon  yourselves 

and,  cold  and  distracted,  you  watch 

your  erudite  and  sycophantic  priests 

move  imperturbable  through  yet  another  incense-stifled 

cycle 

of  senseless  ritual, 
while  Scythians  and  Bulgarians 
paw  at  the  gates. 
O  frail  and  pitiless  and  aching 
under  your  crushing, 
gem-encrusted  tunics, 
we  have  understood  one  another; 
we  are  heavy  and  helpless  with  understanding. 

And  yet  a  worm  of  envy  works  his  file-like  tongue 
on  the  quick  of  me. 

To  feel  my  heart  flutter  up 
with  exaltation  like  a  peasant  boy's 

[32] 


watching  his  love  as  queen  of  the  festival 

ride  by 

billowy  with  mosquito  net 

and  drawn  by  plodding  plough  horses! 

Or  to  jeer  and  be  full  of  the  joy  of  jeering 

familiar,  thoughtless,  unwounding, 

like  these  village  people 

when  she  kisses  her  hands  at  them 

with  the  jerky  movement  of  a  manikin. 


[33] 


POSTPONEMENT 


the  rock  crystal  of  my  silence 
run  silver  flaws; 
unsung  songs  beating  against  it 
have  cracked  with  fine  fissures  the  globe  of  my  silence, 
and  the  knife-thin  ray  of  inner  light 
with  which  I  probe  into  the  future 
splinters  along  them  into  ghostly  spectra. 

If  only  I  had  put  out  my  hand 

when  they  flew  hard  into  the  deceiving  crystal, 

as  bewildered  birds  fly  into  the  light, 

I  should  not  now,  in  this  darkness, 

be  wrapped  and  wrapped, 

like  an  unrisen  Lazarus, 

in  all  these  swathing  ribbons  of  rainbows. 


[341 


PEACE 

COME,  my  own,  let  us  steep  ourselves  in  beauty, 
for  in  the  world  no  sacrifice  avails, 
no  purity  avails  or  holiness. 

They  walked  in  the  flame  of  death  as  into  sunlight, 

and  they  made  themselves  for  others  the  inner  flame  of 

life— 
they  are  dead  and  the  names  of  them,  who  will  remember? 

They   have    fallen    among    obscene    shadows   that   have 

quenched 

the  burning  of  their  vision, 

shadows  piled  up,  ages  deep,  by  dead  lust,  dead  greed, 
around  them  dead  and  around  us  living, 
shadows  full  of  insatiable  teeth  and  padded  paws  that 

prowl, 
betrayals,  trafficking,  plottings,  money-changing. 

The  beasts  of  the  thickets  of  money  and  power — 
they  have  bartered  the  ashes  of  their  bones, 
they  have  sold  their  unnameable  martyrdom  and  passion, 
they  have  traded  in  the  divine  trance  of  their  utter  devotion, 
they  have  made  of  their  death  a  trap  with  which  to  way 
lay  us. 

Come,  my  own,  let  us  steep  ourselves  in  beauty, 

for  it  alone  has  in  it  no  root  of  corruption, 

for  it  alone  is  consolation; 

be  it  only  the  resonance  fallen  mysteriously  on  a  word, 

the  morning's  unfolding 

or  the  night's  restoring  transfigurations, 

the  laughter  of  a  child,  the  singing  of  a  bird,  the  quiver  of 

a  leaf- 
be  it  only  this  tragic  and  imprisoned  and  tumultuous 
heart  of  yours, 
or  be  it  only  now  at  last, 

[35] 


only  the  tender  gesture  of  understanding, 

long  lacking, 

with  which  I  look  into  your  mind, 

and  you  look  deep  down  into  mine  and  bring  me  peace. 


[36] 


SUBURBAN  TWILIGHT 

INTO  the  thickening  dusk 
I  carried  the  dusk  of  my  alien  mind. 
Silence  congealed  on  the  cement  sidewalks 
speculators  have  scratched  across  empty  fields. 
Here  and  there  a  human  fly 
buzzed  in  a  ready-made  house. 

The  sign  posts  were  as  meaningless  and  askew 

as  my  thoughts — 

"Paradise  Point,  Tract  P  3,  Panoramic  Way." 

This,  I  said,  is  an  iniquity  of  drawing  paper  and  India  ink, 

a  calculation, 

a  diagram, 

a  zoological  garden  of  logic  and  lust. 

The  silence  was  like  a  blue  jelly 

and,  as  I  walked,  it  quivered  into  a  blear  piping, 

a  shrill  throbbing. 

It  was  as  if  all  the  memories  of  my  childhood 
sitting  around  the  puddle  of  unconsciousness, 
began  whimpering. 

I  listened,  thinking  to  myself,  "At  least  there  still  are 

frogs." 

Then  I  passed  a  popcorn  peddler's  cart, 
and  the  little  whisk  of  steam  from  his  whistle, 
spiffling  drearily, 
blew  away  white  into  the  unlighted  night. 


[37] 


ANNOUNCING  A  DISSOLUTION  SALE 

'DEATITUDE. 

*-*  This  article  goes  to  the  bargain  counter 
Friday. 

A  limited  supply  from  our  own  agent 
in  the  Elysian  Fields. 

Assorted.    Guaranteed.    First  come,  first  served. 
No  orders  C.  O.  D.  will  be  received. 
100,000,000  samples  have  been  sold. 
The  price  is  right  and  cut  down  to  the  quick. 
Sacrifice! 

These  goods  for  while  they  last. 
Our  motto -monogram  on  every  package: 
'To  him  that  hath.' 
Shop  early.    Bring  your  friends." 

(Galvanic  arms  and  hands 
knock  over  the  salesmen 
waving  paper  money 
sticky  with  sweat  and  blood. 
The  cash  register  chokes.) 

I  put  my  face  against  the  plate-glass  door, 
but  seeing  the  exaltation  of  the  mob 
I  saunter  to  a  graveyard  that  I  know 
to  hum  love-songs  and  study  epitaphs, 
(This  form  of  piety  repays  a  rhetorician.) 
while  dandelions,  sprinkled  through  the  grass, 
make  mimic  maps 
of  prehistoric  heavens. 


[38] 


COSTA  SCARPUCCIA 

THROUGH  the  lit  mist 
that  flows  low  under  the  night  sky 
like  a  silver  dust-cloud  over  the  city, 
nine  orange  lights  on  an  unseen  hill — 
nine  orange  street  lamps  of  Fiesole 
alive  with  a  faint  twinkling  in  the  black  stillness 
mimicking  the  constellation  of  Cassiopeia  setting. 

I  carry  my  mind  like  a  falcon  asleep  on  my  wrist, 

and   it  does  not  peel   the  thin   wrinkled   skin   from   its 

eye 
as  I  wander  down  the  steep  flagged  gorge  of  this  silent 

old  street. 

Like  a  falcon  chained  with  a  fine  gold  chain 
my  mind  sleeps,  drooping  its  predatory  wings. 

And,  fearless  of  startling  it  into  flight, 

I  look  up  and  see 

all  the  thoughts  and  desires,  like  my  own,  that  have  made 

men  make  the  city, 
hewing  it,  year  in  year  out,  day  in  day  out,  with  weary 

chisels 

out  of  cold  stones, 

carving  it  slowly  in  the  image  of  their  fate 
enfeoffed  to  the  cruel  wings  of  their  dreams. 

I  look  up  and  see, 

under  the  nine  far-away  orange  street  lamps  of  Fiesole 

laid  against  the  hill  like  Cassiopeia  setting, 

the    everliving    races    of    the    birds    of    divination    and 

hope 

where  they  sit  in  a  brooding  rookery 
on  the  edge  of  shadows  that  hang  from  jutting  roofs 
of  banks,  shops,  bureaus,  hotels,  houses — 
bald,  old  vultures  with  hunched-up,  shoulder  bones, 
and  hoary,  bedraggled  owls, 

[  39  ] 


and  ruffled,  river-haunting  cranes — 

their  claws  clenched  tight  on  rain-smoothed  cornice  gutters, 

their  beaks  thrust  under  their  wings. 

I  look  up  and  see  them 

and  my  falcon  mind  sinks  its  talons  deep  into  my  wrist. 


[40] 


REQUIEM 

The  birth  of  an  essentially  American  art  is  momentarily  expected. — Radio 
Broadcast. 

TARVA  in  a  steel-blue  crevice 

•"  under  hills  of  ice, 

strange  speck-embodied  pain  of  coming  wings  too  delicate 

for  flight, 

insect, 

why  are  you  trying  to  be  born 

in  this  Switzerland  not  garnished  yet 

with  lepidopterists  ? 

I  see  by  your  feeble  pulsations 

you  feel  a  lost  ray  of  the  sun 

come  crawling 

over  the  glacier  of  recorded  fact. 

Ah,  but  will  nothing 

reverse  the  useless  cycle  of  your  fated  becoming? 

This  shadowy  dawn  is  fallacious. 

Already  as  a  worm 

(much  less  as  painted  death-moth 

or  ghostly  dragon-moth) 

you  are  too  .  .  .  old! 


[41] 


OTHERNESS 

T  T  is  so  silent  here  I  cannot  think. 
*   An  oak  leaf's  clicking  fall 
denudes  my  mind  of  continuity ; 
and  the  ringlet  waves  of  putting 
the  twos  and  twos  of  life  together 
lap  backwards  over  one  another 
and  die  out  into  this  silence 
like  a  wind's  breath 
held  in  over  a  pool. 
I  see  the  crooked  image  of  a  bough, 
the  flickering  of  a  butterfly; 
and  bending  nearer  over  myself 
I  put  my  face  down 
and  feel  the  chill  of  otherness 
creep  over  my  eyes. 


[42] 


TO  A  BIVALVE 

/CREATURE  of  accretions, 

^-^  at  noon,  under  the  sea  water's  pale-green  half  night, 

half  day, 
grain  by  grain 

you  are  making  for  yourself  a  wall  of  rainbows 
secretly  out  of  the  dark,  swaying  sea. 
Yet  what  can  you  know  of  fabulous  signs  and  promises 
arched  red,  purple,  blue, 
binding  sudden  rifts  of  serene  sky 
to  the  scudding  foam — 
you,  when  the  foot  of  their  arch  is  set  on  the  edges  of  the 

world, 
you 

— bubbles, 

a  little,  wobbling,  up -striving  stream 
black  over,  silver  under, 
the  breadth  of  your  mouth? 

Turn  inward  your  dreams,  O  my  spirit. 
Let  the  inside  even  of  your  rebellion  be  a  rainbow 
better  to  you  than  many-colored,  far-away, 
false  hopes. 

Look,  these  millions  of  upturned  faces 
distorted  with  anguish 
— waiting  for  the  miracle! 
Look,  these  millions  of  fixed  eyes 
ashen  with  disillusion! 


[43] 


MARIONETTES 

AT  the  sun-silvered  far  end  of  the  empty  square, 
their  backs  to  me,  they  walk  side  by  side, 
shoulders  and  hips  just  touching; 
they  are  both  in  black, 
and  her  slanted  bright  parasol 
covers  their  inclined  heads 
like  a  little  green  dome. 

I  see  them  stop, 

and  his  arm,  extended  in  its  black  sleeve 

ending  in  a  white  hand, 

makes  twice 

a  gesture,  an  appeal. 

They  walk  on  again 

crossing  a  blue  polygon  of  shadow 

fallen  askew  from  the  grey  corroded  front 

of  an  ancient  church. 

They  loiter 

where  the  joints  of  the  flags  of  the  sun-silvered  square 

converge. 

I  do  not  know  who  they  are, 

and  from  my  window  they  seem  now 

hardly  an  inch  high. 

Yet  in  the  clear  depths  of  my  introspection 

I  see,  sharp  from  their  feet,  diverging  beyond  them 

far  out,  year  behind  year, 

a  crowded  perspective 

interpenetrating  like  a  diorama 

the  sunny  walls  of  the  old  square's  houses. 

Something  has  dropped  out  of  eternity  into  time. 

And  I  feel  the  shimmering  waters  of  their  trance 
suck  me  under 

[44] 


into  a  stillness  where  the  stars  are  lit  at  midday. 

They  saunter  on  again. 

No  wonder  her  tilted  parasol 

is  shot  with  the  dye 

of  spring's  unfolding  tenderest  leaves. 


[45] 


WORDS 

FROM  high  up  among  interwoven  branches 
that  make  black  rivers  against  my  mind's  moonlight, 
words  let  go  of  their  chilled  twigs 
and  spinning  drift  downward 
through  the  inner  stillness  of  my  meditation. 

And  they  are  miraculous  words 
like  the  words  of  incantations. 

What  can  they  ever  be  to  me  these  heaps  of  leaves 

the  keepers  of  gardens  and  graves 

have  raked  up  crinkling  beside  the  crowded  highway? 

Would  I  be  a  wind  to  blow  them  into  the  pitiable  faces 

of  hurrying  travelers? 

Would  I  stoop  with  the  flame  of  a  match  to  set  them 

smouldering 

for  the  sake  of  the  blue-white  column  of  smoke 
rooted  in  their  decay  and  twisting  like  a  waterspout 
into  the  clouds? 

Would  I  dim  the  eyes  of  those  who  do  not  see 

the  end  of  their  journey 

with  the  gusty  eddies  and  rustle  of  prophecy  ? 

Would  I  deceive  these  crawling  convoys  creaking  through 

the  desert 

from  one  bondage  into  another 
with  a  pillar  of  smoke? 

The  flash  and  hurrying  clamor  of  the  highway ; 

the  unceasing  rumble  of  its  wheels ; 

the  unresting  pattering  and  shuffle  of  feet ; 

and  out  of  the  moonlit  silver  plains  and  black  rivers  of 

my  mind, 

sifting  downward  through  the  sacred  stillness 
of  my  meditation, 
magic  unavailing  words. 

[46] 


Y.C  i  06445 


863756 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


*   slJB 


